Inbound mail stuck in Queue

System Setup:
1 Front end Exchange 2003 Server hosted off site
A Local Exchange 2003 Server at both the London and Lymm site

Problem Summary:
Our Lymm site has lost external connections and mail is queuing up on the front end server awaiting the connection being restored to that server (obviously this is normal).

However, several messages for Public Folders replicated to both London and Lymm are also queued up for the Lymm Server, rather than being delivered to the London Server. A team in London needs access to those messages.

Q1. Why are messages for Public Folders being queued to a particular server when the folders are replicated across both?

Q2. How to I redirect the messages immediatly so that the London Team can work on them?

Are the two backend servers in their own routing group? If so, which routing group is the frontend server in?
You can't really prevent this from happening - as the email messages for a public folder get delivered to one server and then replicated to the other server. If the server that the messages are delivered to is down, then you get this problem - hence the routing group question.

A quick and dirty method to get the messages in to the store of the server that is available is to find the raw files in the queue folder on the frontend. Then move those files in to the pickup folder on the server that is available. Exchange should pick them up and drop them in to the local public folder. It isn't pretty but should work.

If the servers were physically separated then I would look at splitting them in to their own routing group.
Then set the SMTP Connectors scope to routing group instead of the Org.

You don't actually need an SMTP Connector for each server - as SMTP Connectors are Exchange org wide by default. If you are sending all email through the frontend server then you could have got away with a single SMTP Connector and the frontend server set as the bridgehead.
Multiple routing groups do away with that.

As the servers are in the same routing group, cycling round the SMTP service and possibly the Exchange Routing Engine service on the frontend server may force the public folder messages to be delivered.

Simon.

0

Featured Post

You wouldn't let your users design their own business cards, would you? So, why do you let them design their own email signatures? Think of the damage they could be doing to your brand reputation! Choose the easy way to manage set up and add email signatures for all users.

In this video we show how to create a Contact in Exchange 2013. We show this process by using the Exchange Admin Center.
Log into Exchange Admin Center.: First we need to log into the Exchange Admin Center.
Navigate to the Recipients >> Contact ta…

To show how to generate a certificate request in Exchange 2013. We show this process by using the Exchange Admin Center.
Log into Exchange Admin Center.: First we need to log into the Exchange Admin Center.
Navigate to the Servers >> Certificates…